Garden porn (inspiration for my water feature)

[treedimensional]

This is one of my favorite GP images. I'm building my own fountain based on this one.

I love this because it is crowded, but not messy. Each individual plant is defined.
There is great textural variety (very important, IMO) and the plant material goes from ground level to high canopy, with innumerable layers in between. And there is lots of shade from the abundant trees.

[NitaX]

Very relaxing.

[FoxInFiji]

OMG that is gorgeous! I love it for all of the reasons you listed. The bold colored water feature is a nice focal point. What color is your fountain going to be? I'm assuming you're going to have the water fall into a sunken lined hole filled with rocks right? How do you winterize that for the winter?

Personally I have a problem transitioning from the ground to the canopy in our yard because the trees are too tall and there isn't enough depth to add that many understory trees and shrubs.

[mrsreynolds4]

Gorgeous. I like how it's a bright pop of color that still ties in well with the plants around it. My kids keep asking for a fountain of some sort, but it's not on my list in the foreseeable future.

[2curlydogs]

I love the water feature! Would you stick with that color?

See, though, this is the sort of thing you can only do with a smaller yard. And, then, I'd feel claustrophobic with how heavily planted it is, though, I agree it's very neat and tidy for all that. And if it's just part of a yard, is the whole yard like that? If not, how does it transition?

[treedimensional]

I may do red. If I do, it would be more red than that one. But I may do blue.
I was thinking about making a fountain in the center of my garden, but if I do it this way (in an existing bed) I'll have more room.
I just have to do it by next year because it will mean digging (fox, as you assumed), and I hate cutting established roots.
And you can do this in a large garden! You are only looking at a small portion of this one! Most people don't design this way, they just do enormous open spaces and fill them with... lawns!

[vanillahip]

I love this. Beautiful!!

[mrsreynolds4]

I like the lush look of that, but wonder how hard it would be to replicate in my area (Denver). I'll be happy in a few years when my little plants grow up.

We have a pretty big "lawn" (not doing great this year) but it keeps the 4 boys & their friends out of the areas I'm trying to plant, so I'm good with that.

[2curlydogs]

Jul 3, 2012 18:35:20 GMT -5 treedimensional said:

I may do red. If I do, it would be more red than that one. But I may do blue.

And you can do this in a large garden! You are only looking at a small portion of this one! Most people don't design this way, they just do enormous open spaces and fill them with... lawns!

Ooh, blue would be nice, too.

I'd love it if there were larger context or overview photos. These little snippets make it impossible for me to envision this in my 15,000 sq ft backyard. Because, yes, we have an enormous open space filled with lawn and I want to drastically reduce that footprint (even though we don't use chemicals, the TIME involved in mowing and trimming... ugh). We'd keep a play lawn and sight lines from the house to the swing set but.... The plan we had drawn up goes a long way to fixing that but I think there's still room for tweaking.

Well, and I have the same problem as fox, as the canopy of the woods to the south is, like, 100' tall and there has to be 20' of "nothing" for the easement (well, I could plant but they'd be able to tear it out if they needed to and I might end up fined).